A visit to the United Flight 93 crash site

As part of the return trip from EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) this year, we stopped at the Flight 93 National Memorial. It’s a 30-minute drive from the idiot-proof ridgetop airport that serves Johnstown, Pennsylvania (see Climate Change Reading List: Johnstown Flood).

The architecture is moving and designed around a walkway that follows the flight path of the airliner that jihadis had hoped to turn into a weapon against the U.S. Capitol. The path picks up after you go to a lower section of the memorial where the Boeing 757 actually crashed.

The building itself contains a lot of information about 9/11, not just the Flight 93 history. Visitors can listen to three phone messages to family members left by passengers on Flight 93.

Here are some of the outdoor signs:

A Harley is parked just outside the main building and includes Todd Beamer‘s final recorded words: “Let’s Roll”.

The walkway to the Wall of Names:

There’s a 93-foot-tall Tower of Voices of wind-driven chimes that look like aircraft parts (audio recording).

It’s a fitting memorial to a group of people who gave their lives in order to spare the lives of Americans on the ground.

Here’s the Hollywood version with the “Let’s Roll” line about 4 minutes in:

RIP especially to the crew: Lorraine Bay, Jason Dahl, Sandra Bradshaw, Wanda Green, LeRoy Homer Jr., CeeCee Lyles, and Deborah Welsh. Airline crews enable us to live richer lives by assuming a higher level of risk every day than those of us who earn our wages by flying desks.

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Charlie Kirk on assassination culture

I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk and had never seen one of his videos, but I was sad to hear about his death today. Sad/prescient post of his from five months ago:

Although I don’t have any personal theories about who might have perpetrated this assassination nor the political leanings of the killer, the statistics that Charlie Kirk put forward above seem right. At least half of my Democrat friends in Massachusetts would kill prominent Republicans, such as Donald Trump, if they thought they could get away with it. They would be doing it not to indulge their rage at people who disagree with them, though they have a lot of rage, but to protect our democracy. Note that most of them would likely prefer less extreme measures, e.g., outlawing voting for candidates who aren’t approved by the Democrats, deporting all Republicans to Eswatini, or making it illegal for Republicans to run for office (a simple measure to protect our democracy from January 6 insurrectionists).

The text of Charlie Kirk’s April 7, 2025 tweet, in case it gets memory-holed:

Assassination culture is spreading on the left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump.

In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione.

The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response.

This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.

A lot of Charlie Kirk’s recent posts on X were about Iryna Zarutska, murdered by a prime example of the heritability of criminality. Decarlos Brown Jr. is the perpetrator (recorded on video, but that’s not enough for his name to appear on the Wikipedia page as a potential suspect). His brother Stacey Dejon Brown is a convicted murderer (2014 article about a 2012 crime). Their father, Decarlos Brown Sr. is also a convicted criminal (NY Post).

Related:

  • Democrat thought-leader Rashida Tlaib, 2023: “Let’s not forget that Republicans are the Party of Insurrection” (i.e., it would be rational to kill Republicans in order to prevent our democracy from being subverted)
  • A response to the shooting by someone with a lot of experience in this area, below.
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Defend a house against woodpeckers using robot drones?

Homeowners around the world suffer a lot of damage due to woodpeckers. How about a system of microphones around the house that listen for the sound of a woodpecker and, if heard, dispatches a drone that lives somewhere on the edge of the exterior, maybe under an eave? The drone will then use its own microphone and camera to locate the woodpecker and harass it, with a water pistol if necessary, until the woodpecker finds a tree or an unprotected home to destroy.

ChatGPT refused to draw a picture of a drone discouraging a woodpecker with harmless water: “I can’t create an image that depicts harm being done to an animal — including a woodpecker being shot with water. … Instead of water hitting the bird, the drone could be shown with a water spray or mist aimed at the trim (not at the bird), to illustrate the concept of “protecting the house” without showing harm to the animal.” It then proceeded to generate an image that looks to me like the poor bird is being blasted with water:

(The Gaza Health Ministry reports that more than 60,000 woodpeckers have been killed via water pistol.)

Grok didn’t comment on my desire to see a photo of violence being done to a woodpecker, but it decided that the stream of water should emerge from the woodpecker:

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Do we all need the new iPhone 17 Pro Max?

The latest iPhones are announced. According to the potentially-lying New York Times, the cameras on the Pro series have bigger sensors, which could be huge, so to speak, for image quality:

As for the camera systems, the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max come equipped with an 18-megapixel front-facing camera with support for Center Stage and a wider field of view, along with enhanced, widescreen selfie support. On the back, all three cameras are 48 MP lenses, including a 48 MP telephoto camera with up to 8x optical zoom and support for 40x digital zoom. The sensors are 56% larger than the previous generation for sharper, more detailed images. The telephoto camera leverages an updated photonic engine that preserves natural detail, reduces detail, and improves color accuracy.

Note that a fixed telephoto lens that does not zoom is characterized as “8x optical zoom”. Also, the information about larger sensors might be #FakeNews. Apple’s own site suggests that only the telephoto camera sensor is larger:

The dual-capture video could be fun, at least for people who are attractive (inset photo of the phone owner from the front camera while the main video is taken by a rear camera).

Those of us with IQs over 207 can take advantage of the built-in Thread support? (Who among us is actually using Thread at home? Are there more IoT companies than non-WiFi IoT devices that actually get used on a daily basis?)

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What was our rationale for wanting to continue to host immigrants after they were convicted of crimes?

“Man Who’d Served His Time in U.S. Is Deported to an African Prison” (New York Times, September 1, 2025):

Mr. Etoria came to the United States [from Jamaica] on a green card in 1976 at age 12. He joined his mother, who had been sponsored by a family she worked for as a nanny, said Ms. McKen, his aunt. He had tough times early in life, she said. He saw his mother flee from his abusive father. In the United States, he struggled to adjust and was bullied in school, she said.

Mr. Etoria has a history of drug abuse, which he has blamed in part on head injuries he suffered as a child. He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. Doctors noted that he has exhibited violent outbursts, hallucinations and paranoia, according to court records.

He was arrested in 1981 on charges of attempted murder, robbery and kidnapping. During a psychiatric evaluation, he said he could not remember exactly what happened, according to court records. He pleaded guilty and served three years in prison.

More than a decade later, Mr. Etoria walked into a leather goods shop and shot the victim three times in the head, according to Brooklyn court records. The motive was never determined, and there was no indication that he knew the victim or that the crime was gang-related.

I’m trying to figure out what our rationale has been for wanting to keep an immigrant after he “served three years in prison” for “attempted murder, robbery and kidnapping.” Why didn’t we deport him back to Jamaica in the 1980s, before he had a chance to commit murder? The U.S. government had the right to deport him, I think, but a bureaucrat somewhere concluded that American citizens would somehow be better off keeping Mr. Etoria as a neighbor?

Here’s a good window into how the female humans of America are implementing Charles Darwin’s sexual selection:

Since leaving prison in 2021, Mr. Etoria, a father of three adult children, has spoken regularly with his aunt, she said.

I.e., the schizophrenic convicted criminal has enjoyed far greater reproductive success than the typical American male who works 50 hours per week, pays taxes, and has never been arrested. Maybe that actually was the rationale for keeping him around? American women want to breed with convicted criminals and there aren’t enough native-born criminals to meet the demand for genetic material?

Note that the subject of the above-referenced article is not about what happened in the 1980s, but rather about the cruel Trump administration that has deported Orville Etoria to Eswatini, formerly Swaziland.

What amazes me almost as much as the idea that Americans in the 1980s couldn’t live without being enriched by a convicted criminal’s continued residence is the ability of the U.S. economy to survive Mr. Etoria and millions of similarly situated enrichers. Taxpayers have been funding shelter, food, security, etc. for Mr. Etoria almost every year since at least 1981 when he was first arrested. Taxpayers are continuing to fund shelter, food, and security for Mr. Etoria now that he lives in Eswatini. U.S. taxpayers are also funding migrant-to-migrant interactions, e.g., “Three victims of Florida 18-wheeler U-turn crash ID’d as Haitian immigrants” (New York Post):

The three victims of the Indian immigrant truck driver who made an illegal U-turn across a Florida highway earlier this month have been identified as Haitian immigrants, according to officials.

The driver Herby Dufresne, 30, and passengers Faniola Joseph, 27, and Rodrigue Dor, 53, all Haitian immigrants, were in their minivan when it plowed into the side of an 18-wheeler driven by Harjinder Singh, an immigrant from India, on Aug. 12, the Miami Herald reported.

(I’m not sure what the argument for keeping the enricher Harjinder Singh here in the U.S. was. India is home to 1.45 billion humans, a number that grows every year, and also India is too dangerous for any human to occupy?)

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Send humanoid robots to do crazy stunts?

Today is the 51st anniversary of when the third greatest American tried to jump over the Snake River Canyon, near Twin Falls, Idaho, in a steam-powered motorcycle. I was there back in June.

From the downtown Perrine Bridge, a mound of dirt remains visible:

There is a monument to the third greatest American right at the bridge/visitor center:

A short drive to the east, the mound itself may be examined and there is additional signage:

Evel Knievel’s particular jump was already replicated in 2016 by Eddie Braun:

If Eddie Braun hadn’t recreated this jump, wouldn’t it be awesome to see Tesla’s Optimus, or a similar humanoid robot, piloting a replica Skycycle X-2?

I’m wondering what other stunts could be pulled by humanoid robots. Motorcycle jumps, obviously, but what else would be fun to watch? Maybe after a humanoid robot proves that something can be done a human can follow in his/her/zir/their tracks (don’t want to assume a gender ID for a robot that thinks fast enough to change gender multiple times per second).

(Readers might be wondering who the first and second greatest Americans are. Elvis Presley, of course, is in the #2 slot. Due to Democrats being in majority in the U.S., we must recognize George Floyd as the #1 greatest American ever to have lived. Educate yourself by reading Floyd’s biography, recommended by state-sponsored NPR, if you aren’t familiar with all of George Floyd’s achievements.)

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Building an AMD-based PC

It’s time to retire my 10.5-year-old desktop PC, which isn’t able to run Windows 11.

Much as I hate to abandon a company that has been passionate about DEI, I think it is time to switch to the AMD side (way better for gaming, which I’m not allowed to do; somewhat better for productivity).

Workload:

  • Adobe Premiere (not very frequently)
  • photo editing
  • training some AI models (if nothing else, I want to train and run a local AI model for photo library search)
  • general Web browsing
  • Zoom and Teams for work
  • Microsoft Office

Dreams:

  • 16 TB M.2 SSD (nobody seems to make this and thus the build below is what I think is the best 8 TB)
  • as many USC-C ports as possible (3 on the back and 1 on the front seems to be the limit; ASR LiveMixer motherboard below was picked to get beyond the standard 2 on the back)
  • reasonably compact case (currently have a Fractal Design Define 7 that is quiet, but absurdly huge)
  • quiet
  • built-in UPS that can handle outages of up to 30 seconds (typical Florida power outage is just a few seconds; I guess a 1-minute supply would be necessary to allow the machine to shut down gracefully if power is still out after 30 seconds; nobody makes this because consumers see that they can get 30 minutes out of an inexpensive desk-cluttering standard external UPS?)
  • built-in CD/DVD reader (will give up for compactness and plug in via USB-C)
  • built-in reader for SD and CFExpress cards (these don’t seem to exist either for 5.25″ or 3.5″ slots; there are some cheap/old readers that fit into 5.25″ slots that read old CF cards, but not CFExpress?)

Here’s my proposed build, with no case:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 4.3 GHz 16-Core Processor ($671.99 @ Amazon)
  • CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
  • Motherboard: ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi ATX AM5 Motherboard ($229.99 @ Amazon)
  • Memory: Corsair Vengeance 128 GB (2 x 64 GB) DDR5-6400 CL42 Memory ($359.99 @ Amazon)
  • Storage: Samsung 9100 PRO 8 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
  • Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 24 TB 3.5″ 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($249.99 @ Newegg)
  • Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 24 TB 3.5″ 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($249.99 @ Newegg)
  • Video Card: Asus PRIME GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB Video Card ($999.99 @ Amazon)
  • Power Supply: Corsair HX1000i (2023) 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($239.99 @ Newegg)
  • Monitor: Samsung Odyssey Neo G95NC 57.0″ 7680 x 2160 240 Hz Curved Monitor ($1499.99 @ Abt)
  • Total: $4531.91

Questions:

  • what is the best case? It would be nice if it can hold one or two addition 3.5″ drives (maybe just move a couple from my old PC), but this isn’t essential
  • do I want the heat sink on the Samsung 8 TB M.2 SSD? It’s almost free and yet they sell the device with and without the heat sink (for mechanical fit?)
  • what is the right video card to get? I think RTX 5080 is what I want and I think that it will drive the crazy huge double-4K monitor, but I have no idea which brand video card makes sense (the ASUS was picked due to being reasonably cheap and available)
  • is the motherboard pick the right one? I might want to add a second M.2 drive some day. I can live with a max of 256 GB of RAM, I think
  • any other improvements?
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Where are rich people from Massachusetts moving?

Happy National New Hampshire Day to those who celebrate.

During last month’s trip to Boston, I talked to a private banker who handles mostly $20-400 million accounts. He says that the relatively new Maskachusetts “millionaire’s tax” in which the progressive state finally has a progressive income tax rate (9% for income over $1 million) has provided quite a few of his clients with the final push that they needed to pack up and get out. “It’s happening slowly,” he said, “but it is definitely happening. It takes people a few years to get a move organized.” New Hampshire recently abolished its personal income tax (2025 is the first tax-free year; previously, the state was tax-free only for W-2 earnings) and it lacks an estate tax so I expected NH to be a popular destination (MA estate tax is 16%). It should, after all, be easier to move 50 miles than to move 1,000+ miles. “Florida is still the most popular destination,” the banker replied. “My California clients are moving to Texas, but from the Northeast they’re still going to Florida.”

What else did I see in downtown Boston before and after this conversation? Boston leadership in health care and pharma is evident from all the ads for home delivery of healing marijuana:

The folks who say that they’re passionate about social justice are content to simply stroll by any number of people who are reduced to sleeping on the sidewalk:

What’s across the street from this guy? A law school that says it has a “commitment” to social justice:

The advancement of diversity and social justice is a cause that many attorneys may address in their careers. Suffolk University Law School’s commitment to these important objectives reflects itself in the wide range of courses that address issues of diversity, inclusion, and social justice. While many courses at the Law School reflect these objectives, the courses gathered here are notable in that they are addressed in a particular way to this cause and will be of interest to students who wish to focus their careers on the advancement of diversity, inclusion, and social justice.

Instead of helping their homeless neighbors, however, the law school righteous decided to build themselves a fancy crib:

Michael Dukakis inaugurated a grand Massachusetts tradition in 1988 (US News):

(Unlike Tim Walz, however, Dukakis did not claim to have suffered PTSD after his tank ride.)

The locals were carrying on this tradition on the Boston Common, August 21, 2025:

Also, if you want to see where you non-Medicaid/Medicare tax dollars went to die…

A Downtown Pony:

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Wall Street Journal warns New Yorkers not to move to Florida

New York-based journalists love to write about how New York taxpayers shouldn’t flee to Florida and skip paying 14.8 percent state/city income tax, 8.9 percent sales tax, and 16 percent estate tax (vs. 6-7 percent sales tax in FL and 0 percent income/estate). Here’s a recent example, “The Worst Housing Market in America Is Now Florida’s Cape Coral”:

The median home price soared nearly 75% to $419,000 in three years, transforming the character of this middle-income community that for decades has catered to retirees and small investors. … Home prices for Cape Coral-Fort Myers have tumbled 11% in the two years through May

So the prices went up about 56 percent, over a five-year period. That’s before adjusting for Bidenflation. What happened in the U.S. overall? Prices went from 218 to 331 (source), a rise in nominal dollars of 52 percent:

In other words, for people who bought a house five years ago (the average tenure in a house for an American is about 12 years), what the WSJ calls “the worst housing market in America” outperformed the U.S. residential real estate market overall.

What Zillow shows is that the Cape Coral market was more volatile than the national average:

So Cape Coral actually has been a bad market for home-flippers who had the misfortune to buy in at the peak, but for the typical Cape Coral homeowner it has been a better market (albeit, not by much) than the average U.S. real estate market. What about for the elites who put the Wall Street Journal together? How has their Manhattan real estate done by comparison? Zillow:

(“New York County”=Manhattan)

So Cape Coral is objectively speaking the worst housing market in the U.S. (reported as fact/news by the Wall Street Journal rather than as opinion). At the same time, people who owned property in Manhattan fared far worse over the past 6 years or almost any time window within those 6 years.

Related:

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Righteous contempt as Florida follows Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland into non-coerced vaccination of children

ChatGPT:

Countries like Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, and most of Scandinavia do not condition public school attendance on vaccination status. Japan – Vaccines are strongly promoted, but school entry is not denied for unvaccinated children. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland – All Nordic countries besides Iceland follow voluntary vaccination policies for school entry. Switzerland – Vaccination is voluntary, and school entry does not depend on vaccine status.

“Which countries have mandatory childhood vaccination policies?” (Our World in Data):

A Democrat on Facebook:

What’s the punchline to this post? The author lives in… Japan, where childhood vaccines are optional. My response to him:

When do you expect the wave of unvaccinated death to hit Palm Beach, Coral Gables, Bal Harbour, Wellington, and Key Biscayne?

Note that Florida has a free “Vaccines for Children” program in which $200 million/year of injections are administered every year. Florida doesn’t have the highest vaccinate coverage rates for kindergartners, but nonetheless Florida has higher rates than the Orthodox Democrat states of Minnesota and Colorado (CDC).

The trailblazing 2SLGBTQQIA+ governor of Maskachusetts:

I personally doubt that the reduction in vaccine bureaucracy will have a large effect on standard childhood vaccination rates in Florida. People already had the option of opting out for religious reasons. Maybe the vaccination rates will go up if the lack of a legal requirement results in some additional creativity among the public health experts, e.g., free medical marijuana to any parent who brings his/her/zir/their child in for shots, convenient shot clinics at places where children are likely to gather. The Righteous assume that the only way to get humans to do something is to threaten them, but economists have found that very small financial incentives can create dramatic behavioral changes.

If we accept that the government has the right to coerce humans in the name of public health what I would do is force Americans to exercise and maintain a government-monitored BMI. Philip’s Shut-Yo-Pie-Hole System would use cameras and AI to make sure every American gets on a scale in the morning. If over 25 BMI then he/she/ze/they can’t get food other than broccoli at either a supermarket or a restaurant (control with a phone app and step tracker). Add one chicken nugget for every 5000 steps. There would be a chocolate ration of 20 grams (increased from the former value of 30 grams) for anyone with a BMI of under 21.

Loosely related, a friend in a discussion group in Maskachusetts let everyone know that he’d moved to Florida and a Democrat responded:

look on the bright side. At least you will live worry free in Florida: no state taxes, no climate change, no vaccines, and no one to tend to your lawns or clean your pools.

The emphasis on cheap/slave labor via low-skill immigration is fascinating to me. The American Righteous decided to fully open our borders to low-skill migrants almost exactly coinciding with the Age of AI/robots. (Of course, it is actually much easier to get labor in Florida than in Maskachusetts because chillin’ on taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, etc. doesn’t pay as well in Florida as in Maskachusetts (see Table 4 in Cato’s Work v. Welfare Trade-off.)

See also

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